My Biggest Job Nearly Finished – TO SIMPLIFY!

Because of the better sunlight, I photograph most of the album pages
outside on my terrace, one page at a time, soooo slow it seems.
So far it is 7,880 photos taking up 10 GB of space on my computer!
And it is all scrapbook pages from before my birth to 2008, soon to 2014.
It is an incredible personal and family history, but I cannot keep them all!
And 30 boxes of albums is too much for someone to deal with when I die.
I do not have children or anyone who could deal with that many books.

Here is my office/guest room today with just 5 more books to photograph.
Compare this with the photos below a few months ago.
And the new couch makes into a full-size bed for guests.
The old one below was a too-short single bed for little Ticos.
All these boxes have been emptied and contents destroyed
as have all the ones in the next photo by the door of this same room.
All of these are also gone now!
The space is free, the house open and
uncluttered! True joy in removing stuff!

The high quality binders used have been donated to schools, libraries and others. And then I have some genealogy stuff and a stamp collection to deal with and I am truly finished! And remember I got rid of a lot more stuff in Nashville including all my furniture! Plus a lot of art earlier here. I have made real progress! Anytime I want to change rent house, it will be a simple move!

I’m applying the lessons learned in many books read: The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo  (I read a review copy summary), Celebrating Time Alone by Lionel Fisher, Simplify by Joshua Becker, Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster, Always We Begin Again, The Benedictine Way of Living by John McQuiston II, Living the Simple Life, by Elaine St. James, Seeking Paradise by Thomas Merton, Walden by Henry David Thoreau and in many ways the Bible. Eliminating “stuff” is so freeing! Now I’m almost ready to die, but think I have a lot of real living to do first! 🙂

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~Henry David Thoreau 

Charlie Doggett
Retired in Costa Rica (My “Woods”)
Pura Vida! 

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